kim jong-il
Re-posted from matt dalby journal:
Amid all the obvious links on Facebook to 'I'm So Ronery' and other Kim Jong-il frolics from Team America following the North Korean dictator's death I found myself remembering another film.
Not as funny or well-made as Team America, but most certainly more complex, compromised, brave, and disturbing. The film is a Danish documentary released in 2009 called The Red Chapel - http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Chapel#cite_note-1
In the film a Danish documentarist Mads Brügger takes two Danish comedians of South Korean descent, Jacob Nossell and Simon Jul to North Korea on the pretext of producing a comedy show in the country, and documenting it. The actual intention is to see inside the secretive nation and reveal something about the country.
It has to be said that for the most part it fails in this aim. The director and comedians (of whom Nossell is developmentally challenged and refers to himself as 'spastic') are chaperoned everywhere, their film handed over every night for vetting, and they only get to see exactly what their hosts want. A great deal of commentary is able to get through since the censors reviewing the film can speak English but not Danish, but the cruelties alluded to can be found out about in more detail from other sources. Start here, there's some pretty chilling stuff - http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea
But there are striking and disturbing things about the film. The eerily empty streets for one. More so is a group of small children seen laughing and applauding. The grotesque aspect of this is that the children can be seen apparently watching each other and the adults in attendance to guage that they're reacting in the right way.
To see a child unable to laugh and react spontaneously, to appear afraid to act in an inappropriate way tells you everything you need to know about the regime.
On a forum thread elsewhere discussing Kim Jong-il's death someone said 'Good. I hope it hurt'. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but it is worth remembering amongst 'I'm So Ronery' and the photo blog 'Kim Jong-il Looking At Things' that the man was not a harmless buffoon. He was a ruthless dictator who presided over mass starvation, mass imprisonment, collective punishment, the killing of physically defective infants, and forced prostitution among other horrors. No one should be sad at his passing.
Personally I love Team America, and Kim Jong-il Looking At Things, but I don't know how many North Koreans feel the same way.
Amid all the obvious links on Facebook to 'I'm So Ronery' and other Kim Jong-il frolics from Team America following the North Korean dictator's death I found myself remembering another film.
Not as funny or well-made as Team America, but most certainly more complex, compromised, brave, and disturbing. The film is a Danish documentary released in 2009 called The Red Chapel - http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Chapel#cite_note-1
In the film a Danish documentarist Mads Brügger takes two Danish comedians of South Korean descent, Jacob Nossell and Simon Jul to North Korea on the pretext of producing a comedy show in the country, and documenting it. The actual intention is to see inside the secretive nation and reveal something about the country.
It has to be said that for the most part it fails in this aim. The director and comedians (of whom Nossell is developmentally challenged and refers to himself as 'spastic') are chaperoned everywhere, their film handed over every night for vetting, and they only get to see exactly what their hosts want. A great deal of commentary is able to get through since the censors reviewing the film can speak English but not Danish, but the cruelties alluded to can be found out about in more detail from other sources. Start here, there's some pretty chilling stuff - http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea
But there are striking and disturbing things about the film. The eerily empty streets for one. More so is a group of small children seen laughing and applauding. The grotesque aspect of this is that the children can be seen apparently watching each other and the adults in attendance to guage that they're reacting in the right way.
To see a child unable to laugh and react spontaneously, to appear afraid to act in an inappropriate way tells you everything you need to know about the regime.
On a forum thread elsewhere discussing Kim Jong-il's death someone said 'Good. I hope it hurt'. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but it is worth remembering amongst 'I'm So Ronery' and the photo blog 'Kim Jong-il Looking At Things' that the man was not a harmless buffoon. He was a ruthless dictator who presided over mass starvation, mass imprisonment, collective punishment, the killing of physically defective infants, and forced prostitution among other horrors. No one should be sad at his passing.
Personally I love Team America, and Kim Jong-il Looking At Things, but I don't know how many North Koreans feel the same way.
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